A chest freezer rarely goes where anyone would choose to sit. It goes in the garage because that is where the space is, in the basement next to the water heater, in the laundry room, or, in a flat with no other option, against a living room wall. Each of those rooms changes what the noise figure means, and each one puts a different demand on the cabinet: the garage tests the temperature rating, the basement tests the floor, and the living room tests the figure itself.
Our main guide to the quietest chest and upright freezers covers which brands publish a figure at all. This one works only with chests, groups the figures by unit so nothing is ranked against a different measurement, and then sorts the picks by the room they suit.
Our picks are listed above, with full specifications for each.
We read the US product pages and spec sheets of chest freezers from Midea, Hisense, GE, Danby, Element, Kismile and others. Three makers print a per-model figure for a chest freezer, and they do not all print the same unit.
Figures printed in dB:
- Hisense WFC050M6XWD, 5.0 cu ft: 40 dB
- Element ECF50MD2EW, 5.0 cu ft: 42 dB
- Element ECF70MD2EW, 7.0 cu ft: 42 dB
- Element ECF10MD2EW, 10.0 cu ft: 42 dB
- Element ECF21MDCW, 21.0 cu ft: 48 dB
- Kismile D5880, 3.2 cu ft: "noise below 40 db", a ceiling rather than an exact figure
Figures printed in dB(A):
- Hisense WFC070M6RWD, 7.0 cu ft: 42 dB(A)
- Hisense CFC177M6AWD, 17.7 cu ft: 42 dB(A)
Not one of these makers states a distance, a load, an ambient temperature or a test standard. So "quietest" here only means the lowest number within one group. Among compact chests in dB, Hisense's 40 dB beats Element's 42 dB. Among full-size chests in dB, Element's own 10.0 cu ft at 42 dB beats its 21.0 cu ft at 48 dB. The two Hisense dB(A) figures stand on their own. Element prints 42 dB for three different cabinet sizes, which reads more like a family figure than three measurements. For why figures from different brands rarely line up, see why you cannot compare dB ratings across brands.
Everyone else publishes less. Midea's eight US chest freezer pages list capacity, temperature ranges and annual energy use, but no noise row, even though its upright freezer pages do carry one. GE says outright: "We do not rate the sound level of our refrigerators or freezers." Danby's product FAQ gives one range for everything it makes: "Danby's refrigerators and freezers operate at a sound level between 35 and 46 decibels." That cannot be pinned to any one chest. We found no per-model chest figure from Frigidaire, Whirlpool, Insignia, Haier or Arctic King. The Beko and Liebherr chest freezers we found are sold in other markets, where noise figures follow European label rules, a different kind of measurement from these, so we left them out.
What the room does to the number
The noise figure matters most where the room is quietest. In a garage, with a door to the outside and a car coming and going, a compressor at 40 or 48 dB is hard to pick out. In a basement, the bigger problem is usually vibration through the floor rather than the airborne figure, which our page on keeping a quiet basement covers in detail. In a living room or an apartment kitchen at night, the freezer may be the loudest thing running, and the figure is worth paying for.
Roughly every 10 dB is a doubling of perceived loudness, so a 2 dB gap within one unit is small and a 6 dB gap, like Element's 42 against 48, is something you would notice in a quiet room. Those comparisons only hold inside one maker's unit, and only if the maker measured each model the same way, which none of them says.
For a small space, the size problem comes first. The Kismile is 20.67 inches wide and the Hisense 5.0 is 24.6 inches; the Hisense 17.7 is 64.8 inches. If you only need a little frozen space by a sofa or a bed, a two-door mini fridge may do the job; our guide to the quietest mini fridges lists the ones with laboratory figures. If the cold storage has to sit under a counter, see the quietest undercounter refrigerators instead.
Garage ready: read the range, not the badge
The garage is where chest freezers most often end up, and the label means very different things from brand to brand.
- Hisense 7.0 and 17.7 cu ft: rated from 0 to 110°F. The 17.7 is garage ready in freezer mode only.
- Midea 10.4 cu ft convertible: "External Temperature Range: 38°F to 110°F in fridge mode, 0°F to 110°F in freezer mode."
- GE: its 2018 and newer upright and chest freezers are "proven to perform at room temperatures ranging between 0 degrees Fahrenheit and 110 degrees Fahrenheit".
- Danby: rated 0 to 110°F, and the garage "must be enclosed so that the freezer is not subject to snow, rain and other environmental weather conditions".
- Element 5.0, 7.0 and 10.0 cu ft: "Garage Ready Yes" on the sheet, with an environmental temperature range of 50°F to 109.4°F. That is a heated room rating, not a cold garage rating.
Heat is the side of the range that affects noise. A freezer in a hot garage has more heat leaking in through the walls and lid, so the compressor runs for longer. Danby's chest freezer manual lists "Ambient temperature or humidity is very high" as a cause when the "Appliance runs continuously", and its fix is to move the freezer to another area. The same manual warns against direct sunlight or nearby heat sources, as this can increase electrical consumption. ENERGY STAR's advice goes further: unless you live in a mild climate, keep the freezer indoors, such as in the basement, because extreme temperatures are hard on the compressor and can reduce its life. A garage freezer in summer is louder in the sense that matters: it runs more of the time.
Manual defrost against frost free
Nearly every chest freezer, and every one we picked, is manual defrost. For noise that is an advantage. GE explains that the sizzling, popping, crackling and hissing sounds come from the automatic defrost cycle, which "normally lasts between 30 and 40 minutes and can occur at various times of the day", and that manual defrost freezers should not make those sounds apart from the liner expanding and contracting.
The trade is the chore. ENERGY STAR says manual defrost models use half the energy of automatic ones, but only if you defrost before the frost passes a quarter of an inch. Danby's manual says to defrost twice a year or when frost reaches about a quarter of an inch. Every pick here has a drain to make that easier, but on the 17.7 cu ft Hisense it still means finding somewhere to put everything for an afternoon.
Lids, alarms and beeps
A beeping freezer in a living room is worse than a humming one. Hisense's spec sheets list no door-open alarm on its 5.0, 7.0 and 17.7 cu ft chests. Element's sheets list no alarm of any kind, and Kismile's page describes only a power light and a run light. Whirlpool's help page explains how temperature alarms work on its chest freezers: depending on model, if the freezer reaches 10°F or more above normal for the setting, the alarm sounds, and on models with a switch it can be tested, turned on or turned off. If you are buying a chest with an alarm for a bedroom or living room, check that it can be switched off before you buy it.
The lid makes its own sound too. GE describes a whooshing sound for up to one minute after the lid is opened, while the pressure inside equalizes, and calls it confirmation that the freezer is sealing tightly.
Levelling and the floor
The floor is where most of the avoidable noise comes from. Whirlpool lists the causes of rattling or vibrating in a chest freezer: refrigerant flow, items stored on top of the freezer, and a cabinet that is not fully level, adding that the floor itself should be level. That middle cause is common with chests, because a lid is a convenient shelf.
All the Hisense chests list an adjustable or levelling leg, and Element lists levelling legs on its 5.0, 7.0 and 10.0 cu ft chests. Its 21.0 cu ft two-door chest lists "Leveling Legs No", which on a garage slab that falls toward the door means nothing can take up the slope. Fill matters too. GE says that placing more food in the freezer "can dampen the noise and diminish the compressor's run time", since cold foods insulate each other.
Clearance around the cabinet
Hisense prints its clearances on the 7.0 and 17.7 cu ft spec sheets: 4 inches at each side and the top and 3 inches at the back. Danby's chest manual asks for 5 inches between the back and sides for proper ventilation. ENERGY STAR says to leave a few inches between the wall or cabinets and the freezer. A chest pushed hard against drywall passes compressor vibration into the wall, and one boxed into a tight laundry alcove has less air to shed heat into, which means longer runs. In a laundry room, also keep it clear of the dryer vent: Danby says not to place the freezer near sources of heat.
What quiet costs
The quietest exact dB figure here, the Hisense 5.0 cu ft, has no garage claim, so the quietest freezer for a living room is not the one for a garage. The garage-rated Hisense chests list 42 dB(A) and the Element chests that list 42 dB will not promise to work below 50°F. A bigger chest holds more food, which helps run time, but takes more floor: the 17.7 cu ft Hisense is over five feet wide. Manual defrost keeps the defrost noises away and halves the energy, at the cost of a regular chore. And two of the three brands with figures publish no price at all, so you are buying through a retailer either way.
How we chose
We started from the chest freezers in our catalog, re-read each maker's spec sheet and product page, and checked the US chest freezer pages from Midea, Danby and GE for figures we did not already have. We grouped the figures by the unit each maker printed, ranked only within a group, and then matched the picks to rooms using each maker's own room temperature rating, clearance, levelling and alarm specs, plus GE, Danby and Whirlpool support material on sounds and running time. ENERGY STAR supplied the energy and placement guidance. For machines that share an apartment with a freezer, see our page on keeping a quiet apartment.
We did not measure any of these freezers ourselves. Every figure here is the maker's own, quoted with the unit it printed, and none of the makers says how it measured. Hisense and Element publish no prices, and Kismile was the only maker showing a price and stock when we checked, so confirm availability with a retailer before you buy.
